First Post

With the onset of game play it took me a little while to figure out what was going on but the tutorial was a great help. My intial strategy was and still is to be passive until I have expanded all over Africa (I am playing as the Egyptians). I chose to play as the Egyptians because of Diamonds statement on where many of the large beasts of burden reside. So I am a pacifist. For instance, Ghengis Khan will tell me to cancel trade agreements with India and I will refuse, but I will open up more trade agreements with Ghengis Khan. Whether or not this works I do not yet know. The largest problem I have faced in the game (aside from technical problems) was barbarians. I was solely focused on expanding my empire and didn't upgrade nor provide enough troops to patrol my land and I quickly learned that clubs verse steel will always result in clubs losing.
In terms of resources I trade with just about everyone to bring in mostly outside sources of food like dear and goat, but I also trade skills that I have upgraded. Like I said before I didn't build a lot of men so I focused on buildings and raising the culture of the people.
Diamond's book mostly predates all the happens of this game, but it is true that without the initial food surplus non of this game would be possible. Cities wouldn't grow and religion would form. There would be no warriors...and so on and so forth.

Pregaming

Okay, so I have begun some preliminary fucking around with the map and the units and build/research order, and I continually get error messages from windows telling me that an illegal action has been performed and that windows must shut down Civ IV. Ummm....I have lost like 2 hours of game play! Anybody else have temporarily map freezes in which the map breaks down to only fog of war and terrain (sometimes roads) and then 8 or 10 seconds later it resorts back to regular game play?

Welcome

Welcome to my blog! Posts will be documenting the similarities and differences between the economic history of the world according to Professor Diamond's book entitled Guns, Germs, and Steal, and the PC game Civilization IV. Enjoy my ranting...